NASA is going ahead with plans for a cislunar pathway dispite uncertainity

BY
JAMES CARLIN
| PUBLISHED:
03-14-2017

Despite uncertainty over policy changes under the Trump administration, NASA is going ahead with plans for a cislunar pathway outpost for future human missions.

Despite uncertainty over policy changes under the Trump administration, NASA is going ahead with plans for a cislunar pathway outpost for future human missions.

Decisions about how to develop the outpost are expected in the coming months.

Bill Gerstenmaier, the NASA associate administrator for human exploration and explorations, revealed that he is studying concepts for launching the primary elements of the proposed outpost as secondary payloads on early flights of the Space Launch System.

"There is starting to be a sense of urgency about selecting what to fly on those initial SLS missions to support the development of the cislunar post," Gerstenmaier said, adding that the agency needs to start making decisions about what the cargo will be.

Gerstenmaier was speaking at the American Astronautical Society's Goddard Symposium.

The space outpost will be a collection of habitation, cargo, and other materials that could support crews working in lunar orbit or somewhere else in cislunar airspace for long periods.

The crew would be ferried to and from the outpost by Orion spacecraft. The team would test technologies that and perform other jobs needed to support the space agency's long-term plans for human missions to Mars by 2031.

According to Gerstenmaier, the development of the outpost could kick-off in the second and third SLS missions, EM-2 and -3. These will be the first flights of the SLS to utilize the more powerful Exploration Upper Stage (EUS).

That version of the SLS will be able to carry secondary payloads weighing up to several tons.

"You are going to see us, over the next several months, starting to make some pretty crisp decisions about what goes on those flights," Gerstenmaier says